teased about running him for president. some were serious, but that was not to be. i think crockett was more genuine than a lot of the so-called down home candidates we have today, and i'll tell you this, he was a lot brighter. [laughter] [applause] i think he would probably be astounded by the dumbing down of the country because he was always trying to improve himself. he really did -- we found his copy of metmorphisi. he's been described as a pumpkin, but there's something

very compelling about this man. that's what drew me to him. all of those qualities that i liked so much in crockett, i find, i find not an ounce of them in the candidates that we have today. ..

>> two women of little rock. through countless interview he's createed a dual biography so that we are able to gain an understanding of the emotions behind the two women bound together by one single photograph. david m ark r go, lic was a long time contributing editor for have "vanity fair". prior to that he held similar positions as "newsweek" and portfolio. before "vanity fair", he worked from 1988 to 1995 as a legal affairs reporter for the new york post.

he contribute today a column -- contributed to a column, at the bar, covering trials of o.j. simpson and william kennedy smith to name a few. a graduate of the university of michigan and stanford law school, david has written pieces including a long-form article entitled "a predator priest" about bringing a pedophile priest to jus mis-- justice. he is also the author of several books including "beyond glory." david says of his new book, it's an honest acknowledgment of racial sensitivities that exist in this country and how when it comes to race relations in america, it can be very complex and an ongoing process. the relationship between elizabeth and hazel is like a metaphor for america's racial history, a reflection of how much more this country, blacks and whites have to do. everyone, introducing david

margolic. [applause] >> well, thank you. i just want to make one correction to your very nice instruction which is that i was a reporter for many years for fr "the new york times"es, not "the new york post." [laughter] that may not mean so much to people down here, but in new york there's a big distinction between the two. [laughter] um, i also want to say that skip mentioned that, um, about elizabeth's birthday, and you might think that it's just a great coincidence that we're having, that we're having, that's the date of my book just happens to overlap with elizabeth's birthday, but that's

really not the case. we deliberately wanted to commemorate elizabeth's birthday by publishing on it, um, as a fitting tribute to her and just sort of -- we just thought it would be good karma, actually. [laughter] we couldn't go wrong, um, coming out on her, on what for her is an important birthday. and so, um, that explains the noncoincidence. i want to thank skip for -- i've already been here once before as some of you recidivists in the audience know, i recognize some of you already, and i want to thank skip for having me back when my work is further along, considerably further along than it was the last time. itit's always nice to have a second bite at the apple. and just looking out i see a lot of familiar faces here including a lot of the people that i interviewed, and that's also

very gratifying. it's always gratifying to see a pile of books and some extra chairs that they are unfold being at the last minute -- unfolding at the last minute which an author always likes to see. nikolai sent me a list of the people who had signed up for this afternoon's program, and on my blackberry i could only get the first half of them, but i looked down the list, and i saw max brantley, ralph brody, betsy jakeaway and johanna lewis, that's only up through the ls, and these are all people who helped me and talked to me and to whom i'm grateful. and i'm sure there are a lot more of you out here. so it's a chance for me to thank all of you as well. um, one of the questions that i'm often asked, um, in

interviews about this book is when i first saw the famous pingture of elizabeth and -- picture of elizabeth and hazel. and my answer is always the same, i have no idea when i first saw it. who can say when you first saw a picture like this? this is the kind of picture that just seeps into your consciousness. it doesn't happen in any particular time, for any sensitive person it's the kind of picture that you grow up with. you notice it at a very early age, and it's just engraved in your mind. you never forget it once you see it. it's just one of those pictures. it's like the picture of the little boy with the cap with his hands up in the warsaw ghetto. it's one of those pictures that you see once, and it sticks with you. it captures -- it's a picture that, there are many famous pictures of the civil rights movement. we all know the images of the fire hoses and the german shepherds and the heartbreaking

images of people sitting in at lunch counters having ketchup and coffee poured on their heads or freedom riders being beaten. but this picture is different. there's something different about this picture, ands what is it? what is it about this picture that stands out in our minds? i think there are a lot of things about it, but it's particularly the face, the face of hazel, that sets it apart. i say in the book that the picture is of elizabeth and hazel, but the picture is really more of hazel than it is of elizabeth. if you look carefully at the picture, will counts' picture, elizabeth is already sort of walking out of the frame. elizabeth is even out of focus a little bit. it's hazel that you, it's hazel to whom your eyes are drawn immediately. and it's all, the way that it fell together, it's all just perfect stage anything a way.

the lighting is perfect, the lighting is coming in from the side. it's early in the morning, it's bright, it sets her face apart. in perfect focus. she's sort of set apart from everybody else in the picture. she just stands out. and then there's the expression on the face and what, you know, what is that expression? it captures, i mean, what picture better captures what the attitude, the attitude of the south towards what was going on, the attitude of the south towards desegregation in 1957. the absolute rage, the indignation, the indignation that southerners felt, the contempt, the utter contempt for black people that's captured in that picture. to use sort of a more modern notion, there's also a notion that's generally applied now to modern warfare. there's the asymmetry of the picture, the fact that the

forces, the powers in the picture are so disproportionate. there's only one black face in the picture, just elizabeth. and she's surrounded by all of these white faces. and all of the power and the force and the influence and everything is all gathered in the white community. elizabeth is very much alone. so elizabeth's face, as i say, is the only black face in the picture. there were -- at the point that she showed up that day, she was the first black. i say in the book we all talk about the little rock nine. at that moment she was the little rock one. and it took me a while until i actually got a good print of the picture. elizabeth is very hard the read in a way behind those sunglasses that she was wearing.

it's kind of hard to know what she was feeling at that moment. she's described it on many occasions, but it's hard to see it. unless you study the picture very carefully, which requires a good print of it. and like any good picture, you're always discovering something new every time you see it. and i noticed that, um, if you look behind those sunglasses, you can see, you can see into elizabeth's eyes, you can see several things. you can see the sadness in her eyes, you can see the fear, of course. you can see a certain kind of resignation as if, as if she almost expected something like this to happen. you can see, um, heartbreak. study that picture sometime, and you'll see all of those things in her eyes. so that was, that's my answer to the question of when i saw the picture the first time. the second time, um, yana

jenelle just described to you. i was in little rock to do a story, a clinton-related story, a story truth be told about paul ha jones -- [laughter] if you remember her. and, um, i guess it was sort of, i had sort of limited enthusiasm about doing the story to begin with, and i think it was probably my good fortune that she wouldn't speak with me. and so the story never happened. and that maybe just as well. but, of course, as an amateur student, i knew all about the picture, so i made a pilgrimage to the old visitor' center, and that was when i saw the poster of elizabeth and hazel. i was just amazed to see this poster. i didn't know anything about the two of them ever getting

together again. i guess the story was sort of a local story, and i had missed it. i hadn't read it in the papers where i was, and the idea that these two people, these sort of archetypal antagonists had come together, and there they were smiling smiling and seemingly comfortable with one another standing in front of central i thought, now, there is a story. there is a real story. i'm pretty sure i saw the two of them very quickly. the two of them were still speaking at that point, and i arranged to visit with the two of them. we all went out to a diner. hazel, hazel's husband, elizabeth and i went to this barbecue place. i think it was a barbecue place,

outside of little rock. and it wasn't simms. [laughter] i discovered simms later. and i became a repeat customer. but it wasn't simms that time. and it was a historic occasion because i remember that elizabeth insisted on treating us all for lunch that day. it was the first time elizabeth had just gotten her credit card, and she had this piece of plastic, and she wasn't sure it actually worked, that you could walk out of a restaurant without handing over some cash. and she wanted to make sure the damn thing worked, and it did. and so elizabeth treated us to lunch. um, i didn't realize that at that point -- this was in 1999 that the two of them, that all of the optimism that had been generated by that reconciliation

poster, the relationship had already started to fray. or -- i guess if i'd been paying careful attention, i might have noticed it, but to me they presented -- they were both very polite with me, and they seemed to be getting along and presented a united front, and maybe i was just oblivious. i mean, i remember that i asked hazel something about how they were getting along, and she said, well, let's just put it this way, the honeymoon is over, and now we're taking out the garbage. and i suppose that maybe that should have been a flag for me, but it wasn't. and, but it quickly became apparent that if i were to do a book, it was not -- the book, the path to the book would be a little bit rocky and that it turned out that that today hazel felt that elizabeth and i were

sort of this in cahoots. i had, i guess, probably the naive assumption i think that a lot of us, particularly a lot of white people are very knew brief about race. naive about race. and i had just assumed that, you know, in talking to a white woman and a black woman and trying to win them over and, and win their confidence and, and get them to agree to talk to me for what was then just a magazine story, not a book, that, you know, whites would sort of be natural allies, and it would be the black woman who would be more skeptical and wary of me. and it was actually quite the opposite. and i think that hazel, hazel quickly felt that hazel had done her homework. hayes elle's an -- hazel's an interesting woman and a self-taught woman. she dropped out of high school to have a family when she was 17 years old, but she had done her reading in the civil rights

movement, and she had learned that when the naacp was founded -- i think it was 1909, i may have that wrong, but i think it was about 909 -- that there were jews who were active in the establishment of the naacp, and there'd been this historic appreciation between jews and brachs. and she -- blacks. and she felt that, you know, a jewish writer and a black woman were going to sort of be naturally allies and with respect necessarily going to be fair -- that i might not necessarily be impartial if all of this. and be, and so at that point elizabeth steps out of the picture, and for the next seven years i never spoke to her again. she would never meet with me. this is hazel. if i said elizabeth -- yeah, hazel. at that point hazel leaves the picture, and, um, refuses to speak with me despite i write her letters, and she's not

interested in speaking with me. and i realize now it was part of her larger sort of disillusionment with everything that had happened. so for the first seven years of my research, and i had yana suggest to you before that i wasn't working full time on this for 112 years. i -- 12 years. i mean, i was gainfully employed for all that time too. but for the first seven years i concentrated my work on elizabeth. and it started at there's a little, nice little victorian bed and breakfast place not far from here in a pink house, and elizabeth came over, and we sat in the study and got to know each other a little bit. that's when the interviews started -- that's when the interviews began. and there was a lot to talk about. i had to learn about elizabeth's family, i learned about the influence of her mother and particularly of her grandfather, her experiences at, in the segregated schools of little

rock and what it was like to grow up black in little rock in the early 1950s. um, we talked a lot, of course, about her year at central and the experience, the horrible experiences that she had there. you know, of course there's this, um, assumption that's grown up in recent years that a lot of this stuff is exaggerated, and i urge -- anybody who thinks it's exaggerated should take the trip up to fayetteville the way i did. touches out to be a very long -- turns out to be a very long drive. much longer -- these states are big out here. [laughter] the very long drive up to fayetteville where mrs. huckabee's papers are, and mrs. huckabee, the vice principal for girls at central high school was quite a pack rat, and she saved all of the disciplinary cards from that year, from the 1957-1958 school

year. and there are a lot of them, and there are a lot of them listing the various complaints that the little rock nine had about people, objects being thrown at them and being scalded in the shower and being thrown down the stairs and being, having their lockers broken into and being harassed in gym class and having stones thrown at them and all of that. it was very useful to go there. so i had a long time to interview elizabeth, and it was, um, it was a very satisfying experience. this was an extremely intelligent woman and sophisticated woman with a great appreciation for history which i admire her for enormously. she understood what i was doing,

and she never interfered with it. she didn't try the lobby me or propagandize me or prosthelytize me or spin me in any way. this was true even after i showed both elizabeth and hazel my book before it was, it was cast in stone, before the publisher pushed the button. i mean, when it was still malleable enough to change. and i remember i even saved it, i think i still have it on my answering machine that i was very curious to see what their reactions would be. and one day i came back home, and there was a message from elizabeth with some apprehensiveness that, david, this is elizabeth, and my heart kind of dropped because i knew she had read the book. and she said, david, there are factual errors on page 16, page 32, page 83, page 95 -- [laughter] and she listed about eight or nine different mistakes that i had made, you know, that the

street lights didn't go into her neighborhood until a certain year, or the oil didn't go on the streets before election day until such and such a time, or i had misspelled mr. christophe's name at dunbar or whatever it was. these were the mistakes. elizabeth never, you know, never tried to spin me or change my conclusions or my attitudes on anything substantive. she was just concerned that i had the facts right. and it just, it heightened my already enormous respect for her. there were many things that i was afraid to ask elizabeth about. i mean, there are some very sensitive things about the many years that elizabeth spent sort of in the wilderness before she went back to work. for judge hum free. i don't know if judge humphrey is here, but i hope he is. and particularly about the death of her son which i was really very much afraid to ask

elizabeth about. a lot of you will remember that and the tragic circumstances there. but i did eventually ask her about all of that. it's all in the book, and it's -- and she really answered all of these things unflinchingly, just enormously courageous of her. finally, after seven or eight years of research a version of my story came out in "vanity fair" on the web site of "vanity fair". it was never actually in the magazine. and then something quite miraculous happened. hazel read the article, and at that point she could see that i had no animus towards her, that i wasn't yet another, another yankee do-gooder second guesser coming down here to take pot shots at her. that i was trying even though she wasn't speaking with me, i

had tried to understand her as best i could and that i didn't have it in for her. and so at that -- and also, i think, she was heartened by some of the things that elizabeth had said about her. they hadn't spoken to one another at this point for several years. in fact, as i point out in the book, the last time that they spoke was on september 11th, the september 11th of 2001 when hazel was in massachusetts, got scared by what was going on and they were no longer talking to one another. who did hazel call? she called elizabeth for sort of support and sustenance which say something about the kind of relationship they had formed each though they were in commune cad doe at that point. so at that point i started to talk to hayes and to make up for lost time, and i felt very lucky about that because the book got a certain kind of symmetry. i wanted the book to be elizabeth and hazel, i department want it to be -- i

didn't want it to be just elizabeth, so i caught up with hazel. and she soon learned, i sign subjected her to the same kind of incessant questioning to which i'd already subjected elizabeth. elizabeth was always amazed that i kept having more questions for her. and whenever i said to her, you know, this may be it, i think i may not have any more for you, she'd laugh. [laughter] she came to laugh at a certain point because she knew that there'd always be more. so then hazel got subjected to the same treatment as elizabeth, and i learned her story going back to redfield. she took me to redfield where she grew up, to biddle shop, do i have that right. >> the neighborhood -- in the neighborhood in little rock where she lived when she first moved here. i learned about her background, her sort of racial attitudes, a little bit about the, about the day of the picture and how in a

way how typical the picture was of somebody of her background, you know, reflecting the racial attitudes that she had grown up with, but also in a sense atypical. an important sense atypical because she was really quite an apolitical girl. she really didn't care about politics, she didn't think much about politics. she was into boys and dancing. i mean, steve mattered much more to her than brown v. board of education. [laughter] that was very clear, and she'd be the first to admit that. and so there was a lot of acting out that day. i mean, she just, you know, she was somebody who was kind of a performer, and she just wanted to outperform the other girls that day. and that's what she did. and that was the moment that will counts happened to capture in his picture. she was just sort of acting out.

and she was also 15 years old, and i think that, i think that's an important factor. she looks much older than that in that picture, and i think people judge her as somebody much older than that, rather than some 15-year-old girl who was just out to sort of impress her friends. so i followed, i followed hazel's story up through that very dramatic moment that we mentioned before in 1962 or 1963. it's even significant that hazel didn't remember precisely when it happened. but she'd seen these disturbing images on television. she was live anything a trailer outside of little rock, she had two young kids, and she was seeing these images of the civil rights movement and these images of brutality, and she realized that she had, she had made her own unique contribution to that. and i think it dawned on her slowly that her own children

were going to grow up to realize that that was their mother in this picture in their history book and that she had an account to settle. and so she picked up the phone one day, this is one of those things where people have different memories of the same thing. it's unclear whether she reached elizabeth directly or whether elizabeth's grandfather answered the phone and took a message. but one way or the other at some point elizabeth and hazel actually spoke. and elizabeth and hazel said to elizabeth, i'm the girl in the picture, and i just want you to know how sorry i am for what i did. and there's really not that much more to say about the conversation. it was a very short conversation , um, i think there really wasn't that much more for either of them to say, and that was it. but it was, to me, an enormously significant moment in the story because, you know, every author

wants to like -- it's easier to like the people that you're writing about. for whatever reason, you want to like them. and you want to trust them. and i thought this was, it was very significant that, um, in 1962, you know, when there was no oprah on television and there were no television cameras around and nobody was watching and nobody was recording it and not every, you know, not every moment was considered fodder for tabloid television, you know, in the privacy of a trailer in the outskirts of little rock hazel made that phone call. and so that, that to me put into a different light everything that hazel did subsequently. it said to me that her heart was in the right place. so we fast forward, i mean, i don't fast forward -- i don't do anything fast. [laughter] when i'm writing.

but we fast forward now, i mean, in the book i describe, you know, elizabeth goes into the army, elizabeth gets out of the army, elizabeth tries to find herself, elizabeth has many years sort of in the wilderness. elizabeth has two children. hazel raises her family, she has three kids, and she quickly has grandchildren and gets involve with the a number of, a number of sort of hobbies; belly dancing and new age, various new age kinds of things. but also tries to get involved with the black community, um, in certain ways. um, she starts working with unwed mothers and mothers with children in foster care. um, she goes on, she works with underprivileged kids and takes them on field trips. again, the only cameras that are there are, you know, point and shoots that people have to bring with them. there's no press coverage of any of this. her husband sort of makes fun of her for, you know, for trying

to -- still trying to atone for the picture. but this is, this is how she wants to live her life, and she wants to be a role model for her children. and she's bothered by the fact that the picture keeps appearing with increasing frequency. every anniversary the picture appears, and it's in this all the history books and the fifth anniversary and the tenth anniversary and all of that, and no the one ever bothers finding out whatever happened to her. and she thinks that she knows that she's evolved, but no one else knows that. and she's not press savvy, so it doesn't occur to her to call anybody up and plant the story anywhere. and it really takes the 40th anniversary to sort of bring out her story. and i would imagine that many people here remember the 40th anniversary and how she comes forward and how will counts, the original photographer, comes back to town and takes the second picture that becomes the poster, um, that sort of gets

all of little rock's hopes up, that skip rutherford decides to put on a poster and that's sold in the visitors' center, still being sold in the visitor' center, apparently. people still want to believe the message of the poster. it says reconciliation at the bottom of it. and everybody remembers, um, how excited everyone was. and the idea was that if these two people could make up, well, then perhaps little rock which hadlied in shame for all of these -- had lived in shame for all of these years and was an embarrassment to its citizens and a laughingstock around the world, maybe little rock had finally turned the corner. and there was great hope placed in the relationship between elizabeth and hazel and their ostensible reconciliation. and, you know, on the one hand, of course, we know in retrospect that this was naive to expect that two people could bridge a

gap so significant. but on the other hand, it was prophetic. what i describe in the book is a story that's really quite extraordinary about how the two of them developed a relationship with one another. again, when people weren't looking. and they, they made presentations together, they spoke to high schools and college kids and grade school kids together. they became sort of a road show and talked about their respective experiences. that part of it was all public, but they also started to hang out privately too. they went on field trips together, they'd go to flower shows together, they'd go to thrift shops together, they'd buy books together, they'd go to hot springs together, and they actually discovered that they had a lot in common. and became, i think, um, they became friends. and quite an extraordinary

degree. and i mentioned that, you know, any motorist in little rock who had happened to pass them in a car and saw this white woman and black woman sitting in the car next to them at the intersection, the white woman driving because let's never got her -- elizabeth never got her license, so hazel was always the driver. to think that those were the two women who were in the famous picture, and here they were just driving around together. whoever would have come to that realization would have driven off the road. so there was, so there was this bond. but as i say, by the time i came along in 1999, it was already starting to fray. and be i describe, i describe this in the book. i describe the causes of it. i think that, you know, from elizabeth's stand as i say elizabeth is a student of history. elizabeth is very demanding, demanding of herself and demanding of other people and

very precise. she speaks precisely, she demands precision from other people. and she thought that hazel -- she couldn't believe that some of the things that hazel couldn't explain were sort of unconscious errors of mission. she thought that it had to have been deliberate. she was, i'd be the first to say and maybe elizabeth would agree, elizabeth was tough on hazel and demanding on hazel. and she couldn't believe, for instance, that a photograph, a scene that horrible could have been -- something as horrible as what happened on september 4th of '57 could have been undertaken so lightly. there had to have been more of a story to it. haste l had to have remembered more about it than she did, and the tact -- fact that she didn't remember more about it had to have been a conscious attempt at dissembling, it had to be deceitful. it couldn't just be

forgetfulness. and there were many things like this that elizabeth took issue with in hazel's story. and that was one thing that was happening. from hazel's standpoint, i mean, hazel felt this kind of tension coming from elizabeth. hazel also felt the kind of antagonism coming from other members of the black community and other members of the little rock nine who seemed to resent her presence at various events who thought that she was out to cash in. where had she been all these years, you know? she was clearly out to make a book. she couldn't possibly be sincere. and, of course, hazel knew better than that, and hazel knew that all of these years she had been working to, working for racial ameal yore asian. but she couldn't convince other people of that. and then there was the flak that she took in the white community. she took a lot of that. there were a lot of people who

felt that hazel was a great embarrassment to the white community. she had become the symbol of white little rock, that all of the good kids at central high school had been tarred by her brush, and the world had come to think that everybody at central high school was like hazel that year. in fact, hazel hadn't even been in central that year. her parents pulled her out within a week of the time the picture was taken, and she wasn't even a student at central that year. and they wanted hazel just to go away. and they found hazel to be an embarrassment. and so hazel found that she was getting flak from that community as well. and there's a story in the book about hazel going to one of her class reunions. it's absolutely striking to me that somebody in hazel's position would have the nerve and the guts in a way to go to a class reunion, but she did go. and everybody sort of ignored her or sort of snickered at her.

she heard people snickering, you know, that's the girl in the picture. and she told me that one of the girls in the picture -- one of the girls who was snickering at her was one of the same kids who had jumped out the second floor window at central the day the black kids actually arrived. so hazel felt she didn't need this, you know? she department need this, um, kind of, um, disapproval, and she started to withdraw. and has continued to withdraw ever since. and so, you know, among all of the people i talked to for this book, and as i say, i see a lot of you in the audience, hazel is not here today. hazel said that she hoped that -- she expected that the interviews that she gave to me would be the last that she would ever give. um, in publicizing my book hazel will not go on it's. hazel has, um, hazel is out of

town. i spoke to her the other day, and she's out of town. you know, it's probably a preplanned vacation, but it's also a little bit convenient, um, and i don't say that disparageingly. she doesn't want to be around for any of this. and i even got -- i left out that they even got flak from oprah winfrey. the two of them went on oprah winfrey together, and oprah seemed to resent their reconciliation or their relationship. but oprah was very skeptical and very preemptory and harsh hard h both of them. she was discussing the most important photographs of the 20th century and, of course, the picture of elizabeth and hazel was among them. but she got them on and off the program very, very quickly. um, and even though brit and hazel -- elizabeth and hazel were sort of coming apart at

that point in and their relationship was growing more distant, they could both agree that they had been ill-treated that day and felt very bad about it afterward. i always lose track of time. i hope that i'm reasonably on time here. so the -- i think that, as i say, their last conversation was on september 11th of 2001, and they've not spoken since. m -- in looking around, i want to talk about how little rock has treated me in working on this book. i have to say that i was, i was self-conscious about coming down here. in the course of doing my work, i was very conscious, as i say, of placing myself in a position to judge in the convenience of

the 21st century of judging people. t very easy to take pot shots at people from different eras and not to have been here at the time and not to have known how i would have behaved. there was a quote that i came across -- i'm not going to read anything from my book tonight, but i just want to read one quote that i came across in the course of my research that i thought, um, captured my attitude towards my work so beautifully that it's the end graph in the book. it's from frederick douglass who says my interest in any man is objectively in his manhood and subjectively in my own manhood. and that's the way that i feel about this project, that, you know, it was really a chance for me to try to assess where i would have been and what i would have done in 1957 if i had been

here, you know, a white guy, a student at central high school or a citizen in little rock or whatever and how i would have -- whether i would have stood up and how well i would have stood up. i tried to let the facts speak for themselves, i tried not to be any more judgmental than i needed to be and not to take the easy shots. a lot of people in little rock, most people in little rock were very nice to me. i got help from all kinds of people at various research libraries. i placed ads in the little rock paper for people's reck elections. recollections. i had many, many interesting experiences, some very moving experiences and some surprising experiences. i mean, history's always more complicated, and the complications and surprises of history are what make it so enriching and satisfying to do. i mean, i remember in particular

in response to one ad that i placed in the democrat gazette for people who remembered the picture, i wanted to find the people who were in the picture, and i wanted to find people, um, who were another central with elizabeth. and i wanted to retrieve as many stories as i could. and i remember i thought that was somebody heckling before over there, but -- [laughter] i don't think it is. um, i remember one woman calling me. i didn't want get many responses to these ads, but i remember that there was one woman who called me, and she said that, you know, my father was a segregationist. a white woman calling me. my father was a segregationist, and, but he came home the night that that picture of elizabeth ran. it ran in the -- i hope i get this right. it ran in the democrat before

the gazette because the democrat was the evening paper. will counts' picture ran first, and there was a very similar picture that ran in the gazette the next morning. hazel, incidentally, was not identified in either picture which is interesting. one of the editors, i talked to many of the newspaper people who were covering the story, and one of the editors said that things were so enflamed that we -- there was no need to, no sense in identifying her. and besides, to us she was just a generic white girl, a generic segregationist girl, and there was no need to identify her. but anyway, um, this person contacted me after i, after the ad ran, and she said my father came home that night, and we were sitting around the dinner table. and i, and i'll always remember him saying i don't want my kids going to school with niggers either, but they didn't treat that little black girl right.

and i thought that was so moving, um, that he -- that was what he said and that she remembered it after all these years, that that picture, that picture scandalized -- it embarrassed even selling rebasists, that picture -- segregationists, that picture. my only, the only fault that i would find, um, as i say, hazel would tell you that apologizing, that coming forward was a mistake. to her, it was a bad mistake that she made. um, it was ill advised. she says that she's sorry that she did it and that all of these, all of these people on those pink slips in mrs. huckabee's file in fayetteville, none of them ever came forward or very few of them ever did. they went on to live their lives, nobody ever gave them any grief. um, i tried to call a few of

them and i didn't get very far with most of them. i remember calling up one person in particular whose name was all over the files, um, i think probably a name that many of you would recognize, somebody in a position of some prominence in town, and he hung up on me. he wouldn't talk to me about it. i mean, that was one way to do it which was to pretend that nothing happened. um, and so while i'm not judgmental about a lot of people, i am judgmental about the people who really ran amok that year and were allowed to run amok by the school authorities and really paid very little price for it and in later years never did come forward. and i think, also, that there's this, there's this dangerous trend, um, to pretend that things were not all that bad and that, you know, that things have been exaggerated and that the little rock nine has sort of created a cottage industry of

sympathy and enough already with this and let's just move on. and it's all exaggerated. and i would urge people to, not just to read my book which is, which, you know, is, after all, secondary history, you know, go back and read some of the contemporaneous documents. go back into mrs. huckabee's files and read those reports. she had no axe to grind, she was just recording what was happening. and so i think that that kind of revisionism which surfaced on the 50th anniversary, there was a story in the democrat gazette about, in this which many of the people who were at central, um, in 1957 and '58 were saying it was really just a few bad kids and things had not really been that bad. that needs -- we have to guard against that. and i think that no one has been more vigilant about guarding against that than elizabeth. one of the, one of the

remarkable, um, moments in the story is elizabeth, um, elizabeth -- a woman who once used to have to bring a wastebasket lined with a plastic bag with her when she spoke in public for fear that she'd get sick while she was speaking, she was that scared of public speaking -- elizabeth having become adept and passionate and articulate and confident enough to give a speech was the one who was chosen to give a speech at the commemoration of the visitor center the day after that article ran in the paper. and, you know, she as an eyewitness to all of this was, no one was better suited to counter this revisionist argument that things with respect, things were not really all that bad. and she gave a very impassioned speech about that that was very moving. so this story has a very happy ending for me. i mean, i feel, i feel very

proud of this book. um, i feel privileged to have met both elizabeth and hazel, and as i said, um, admire them both, and that's a great treat for an author. i met a lot of interesting people doing this book. i've made probably ten visits to little rock, and i've enjoyed my trips down here even when the town was snowbound and completely paralyzed with maybe a half an inch of snow. [laughter] and i learned that little rock, apparently, has no snow trucks, and i was grateful that there was food in my hotel because there was nowhere to eat, and everything was closed. be but the town was nice to me, and most of the people i interviewed were gracious and patient with me, and i think, i hope that they feel that my book is fair. that's the most important thing.

so it's a happy ending for me. um, as, you know, as it stands, it's not a happy ending for elizabeth and hazel. i tried not to sugar coat it. i tried shot to influence it in if any way. in any way. i didn't think that it was my role to try to bring them together, and, you know, when i would come down here, i would visit them separately, i would rarely talk to one about the other until the very end. a reporter always puts off the hard questions million the end. but -- until the end. but at a certain point i would have to say, elizabeth, you know, hazel says such and so about you. is this true? hazel, elizabeth said such and so about you. and just criss-cross and go back and review what one of them had said about the other. but one thing struck me, and i don't know whether elizabeth would agree with this or not, but i was struck by how each of them talked, each of them when they talk about one another, they each get choked up.

i mean, it's very clear to me, and maybe i'm just, you know, the outsider and the armchair psychologist, but it's very clear to me that there's still a very strong bond that exists between these two women. and a very profound connection between them. and it wasn't, you know, it wasn't my place as i say to bring them together. i act only at the very end at the behest of my forever, my forever said, you know, we have to try to get a picture of them together. they owe it to history to pose one more time together. and i actually reluctantly did ask them both, and i don't know if you could predict what their reactions would have been. um, i was, after all the years i put into it, my reaction, i think, was a little bit naive still. but elizabeth was willing because, as i say, elizabeth is a student of history, and elizabeth realized that for better or for worse, these two people in perpetuity are going

to be joined together, and they had a certain obligation for the sake of history to let history see them as they turned 70. i hope i'm not giving away some secret there, elizabeth. [laughter] and so elizabeth was game to do it. she said i'm not sure what i would say to her, but i would do it. and hazel said, hazel didn't say no, hazel said i'm not ready yet. and the operative word there is "yet." and i'm hopeful that, you know, sometime when we're all out of the way and nobody is looking and nobody's paying any attention to them that, um, the two of them do come back together again in some way. and that would, indeed, be a very happy ending. so i just want to thank all of a you for coming and for caring about the story and for caring about my book, and i'm happy to

take any questions you might have. [applause] >> all right, thank you, david. all right. we have time for some questions, so, please, raise your hands. ms. abrams. >> why am i not surprise that you're asking the first question? >> you got to know me very well. >> i did. you were extremely helpful, and i don't know, i must have seen you on that list because i got the a on that list, and you must have been been on there. >> i was not on it. that's not the issue. >> she just shows up. [laughter] >> david, i am a scholar of history, and i have great respect for you as a researcher of history. but most historians also are prophets. my question to you is, in light of the history that you did for

not only little rock, but for this country and at the time that a we are now as a prophet of research and the divisiveness that is now present as we have an african-american president, what is your projection of how far we have come in this country, not just in little rock? >> well, the first, my first comment is that the words history and prophet at least when prophet is spelled with an f, prof -- are rarely associated with one another. [laughter] and probably prophet with a ph not much more. um, i think that, i think that, um, this story has hopeful and both pessimistic and hopeful elements to it. you know, just extrapolating from, extrapolating from this story.

and as i say, i think that on the one hand you could read this with great despair, you know? that two people of good faith had the experience that they had. um, on the other hand as i say, i think there's this very profound connection between the two of them and, let's face it, i mean, when you read -- there was just an amazing collection of material that i came across. i don't want to take up too much -- i want to give people a chance to ask questions, but i just want to take one slight die depression to say -- digression to say that there was an mit professor who came down here in 1957 to research what was going on in little rock. and i went to hook at his pay -- look at his papers at mit.

he died several years ago. and his papers were absolutely voluminous, 40 boxes of them. and there was everything in there but his stuff on little rock which was heartbreaking. um, and so i, it turned out that i knew his -- his son-in-law was a former new york times reporter whom i knew, and, um, he said let's look around. and i spoke to his son, and his son said, you know, there's one more box of his stuff in the back of my closet, let me just look in there. and sure enough, the little rock file was in there. and he spent several dayses down here interviewing the leading citizens of little rock going to the arkansas club, the segregated club, the little rock club. the little rock club. no jews or blacks allowed, um, and he was -- this researcher was allowed in there because he was a guest of the people, but he could never have joined as a jew.

and, you know, the world that these people describe i say in the book that it's something like, i mean, all of these people are now dead, and it's like spoon river anthology for those of you who remember their voices from the dead talking about little rock in 1957. and it was really a pretty bleak place. and, you know, racially it was in the me brander that would age -- neanderthal age. and, you know, you don't have to be pollyanna to know about the strides that have been made since then and how even an event like this would have been unthinkable back then, you know? i mean, you fly into little rock, i always think these are superficial things maybe, but the first thing you see when you fly into little rock is the little rock airport commission, the photographs of those five or six people, you know, and i think there are two blacks and four whites or whatever, and maybe it's three and three, i don't even know, and you're reminded right off the bat of how much different things are here.

.. stephanie davis >> yeah, got a question. elizabeth. >> yeah. books like david or any historical book bring elements of truth because where things have happened, people can say, something happened here. i don't know much about it, but

something has happened here. it happens everywhere. it happens ever ywhere. that's what made me talk about those painful memory, and that type of thing does continue. in happens everywhere, but some people go to the primary sources. [laughter] >> and there is a primary source. [applause] >> i think you should take that as a complement. >> she is thee primary source, and so is minny jean. >> [inaudible] >> oh, okay. because i, you know, i've often said that the one biggest mistake that i made in doing this book is not writing concurrently about minnie jean

and doing a boxed set, you know? [laughter] she just, you know, there couldn't be two people more different than elizabeth and minnie. they are complete polar opposites only united in how amazing each of them is, and it was a missed opportunity, and i hope somebody else does her book. >> a question here. >> it's more of a complement. i read this book this past month, and if you don't have a copy, don't believe without it, and a copy l things i want to say. dave describes the dresses 245 the two girls wore that day, and i was so -- i could identify with both of them because i had both of those dress, so that is the kind of care he took in telling the story because he made them very easy to identify with, and the other thing i want

to say is that more often than not, people who come from out of town and try to write this story are not -- they often make all of the white people villains and all of the black people hero, and instead, you gave us two beautifully complex human being, and i really, really appreciate that. >> i'm grateful to you for saying that. i thank you for mentioning the dresses because i think that the story about elizabeth and her sister, anna, making her skirt for school, is just, is so powerful to me and the fact elizabeth never wore that skirt again, you know, this skirt that was made with such hope for the first day of school, and, you know, that she put it up in the attic and it was thrown away at some point.

they had the right idea that first of all that was a dress that should have ended up in the the smithsonian. that's where it belonged, but instead it disintegrated. i'm glad you noticed that. ralph brody is here. he came to the last talk. we have different feelings about parts of the story, but i have great respect for him. i try to be fair to him, and i tried to, as i say, i try to put myself in the shoes of anybody who was here then, and not just throw around these very easy generalizations about people. this was a -- it was a complicated situation that was thrust upon little rock, and, you know, i tried to capture it in as much of its complexity that i could. >> he forget a question, back

there in the back. >> i'm a second year clinton student. i was with them when they had the ceremony this year. i was the person responsible to be alongside her for that whole function, so several hours. that was an insider's take, and thank you so kindly for being so wonderful. my question to you is this. our latest stanza of our national race drama is at a ranch in texas where there's a rock. on that rock was something derogatory and inflammatory. how would you go about advising today's youth in understanding the history associated with that

when so many are disconnected from that particular history and the word associated with that rock? >> well, i think, you know, first of all, i'm hopeful and not just for my own selfish reasons that people read a book like this. i mean, everybody is in high school at one time or another, and i think that, you know, this book sort of frames the issue from the standpoint of two high school kids living through all of these issues, and i think that for people who don't know about the era or the issues, it's a good initiation into them. that's the first thing. the second thing is that i think that this has to be addressed with great candor, and i mean you absolutely no disrespect. that rock said nigger head on it. i mean, people don't say it because they think it's better not to say the word, but the

full outrageousness of that episode can be captured only if you don't fuzz it over or obscure it. it needs to be articulated, you know? i didn't hesitate -- if that word came up in the course of my book, i used it because that was part of the language of 1957. now, the perry story illustrates that it's part of the language of 2012. i mean, we know -- or 2011. it was pointed over and apaintly disappeared at some point, but beneath the surface of the history of this country, there are a million episodes like this. it's everywhere. it's absolutely everywhere, and you know, we do ourselves no favor not to acknowledge it, and it's sort of -- i'm kind of pleased whenever, you know, when haley barber says something or

when an episode like this happens or we can think of many other up stances where -- instances where race peaks up its ugly head, it needs to be discussed, it needs to be ventilated. it has not gone away, and it's deeply embedded, and so i think it's, i think it's a good thing, and it's instructive when it happens, and even when we discuss it as you and i are discussing it now, it needs to be -- it needs to be discussed explicitly. >> ladies and gentlemen -- [applause] >> this event was hosted by the clinton school of public service at the university of arkansas. to find out more visit clintonschool.uasys.edu. >> this is a tale of abiding

drama. first one is on september 23, 1955 in denver, colorado on the golf course. eisenhower had not enjoyed a vacation in years. believe it or not, the president of the united states, himself, cooked a huge breakfast that morning for his fishing buddies, but golf was the priority of the day. after a briefing, he headed to the country club. the secretary remembered that she had never seen him look or act better. eisenhower's golf game was interrupted four times that day for phone calls from the secretary of state. now, this was before cell phones, so an irritated and probably profane ike returned to the clubhouse for only one call that ever got through.

it was important. the soviet union had made an arms deal with egypt. he knew this would open a new chapter in the cold war, and they agreed the president should send a message to the soviet union. the president wanted to think about it overnight. he told dulles he'd call him the following morning. that phone call was never made. he went back to golf, but his game declined. as the day wore on, the president experienced grows discomfort, declined his evening drink, had little appetite for din e and retired early. in the middle of the night, he said i got a pain in the lower part of my chest. because he complained earlier about indigestion, she gave her husband milk of magnesia. she called the doctor, the

president's physician, who rushed to the white house. he put out the word that this was a digestive upset when he knew it was a massive heart attack. he waited until mid afternoon that day before transporting the president to fits simmons hospital. even then, he walked to the car rather than calling the balance. if you want more detail on the mismanagement of the situation issue you have to read the book. [laughter] i don't have time tonight. eisenhower was in the hospital for six weeks. in those days, the gold standard for treatment of heart attack pairkts was total -- patients, was total bedrest. they did not permit him to read a newspaper, watch a movie, listen o to to -- listen to a football game on the radio or do presidential business. he didn't walk across his room for a month. this man felt like a caged animal. at the very moment the soviet

union attempted to change the balance of power in the middle east, eisenhower was out of commission. secretary of state john foster dulles was on his own unable to consult with the president like he normally did. let us bury the myth that he ran foreign policy in the eisenhower years. everyone close with him knew that ike was in charge. dwight eisenhower was out of the white house. people hardly believed it. he was out of the white house for three and a half months. except in two nights to recooperate in gettysberg. drama number two is he's restricted in activities, he obsessed about whether or not he should run for a second term in 1956. i'm satisfied that ike always intended to run. in the age of roosevelt, you had

to have a second term to be a great president, and ikemented to be a great -- ike wanted to be a great president. the heart attack raised the great question of whether physically he could run. ike repeatedly discussed possible successors with aids, none of whom had a snowball's chance in hell of getting nominated or elected. the only republican with sufficient stature to run was chief justice earle warren of the supreme court. to know why that was doused, read my other book about civil rights, chapter five tells you all about it. [laughter] he shot down every argument of running and convinced himself he would be healthier serving than retiring. ike also feared that no one else could prevent a nuclear holocaust. in january 1956, eisenhower was